Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths, 433 



sarily determined its course to the glacial ocean, from epochs long 

 anterior to the creation of a mammoth. 



Looking to their low altitude above the sea, their muddy and 

 sandy composition, and also to the discovery by Pallas of marine 

 remains in many of them, we must believe that all the low promon- 

 tories between the Obe, the Yenisei,* and the Lena, which lie 

 northwards of the ancient ridges and plateaux, were under the waters 

 and estuaries at the periods when the mammoths ranged over the 

 Ural, the Altai, and the adjacent regions of Siberia, then above the 

 sea.f Such of these creatures as were entombed in masses of 

 tenacious clay at the mouth of these estuaries, would necessarily be 

 preserved almost intact, whilst the desiccation and elevation of such 

 mud banks, accompanied by an increase of cold, due to the raising 

 up of a large terrestrial surface like Siberia, would thoroughly well 

 account for the occasional conservation of their thick hides, and 

 much of their animal matter. 



Whether, then, we argue from the evidences presented to us in 

 the Ural chain and its flanks, from the ancient geography of Siberia, 

 or from the natural history of the mammoths, and their adaptation 

 to existence in the same parallels of latitude as those in and near 

 which they are now found, we can, it appears to us, arrive at no other 



* We write Yenisei, like all other Russian words, as it is pronounced. 

 The German J, as used by Pallas and the early German explorers of distant 

 parts of Russia, has, unluckily, found its way into all English maps. Pallas 

 states, that the fossil bones which fall from the high cliffs of the Yenisei, 

 opposite Krasnoyarsk, are so numerous, that, on decomposing, they form a 

 substance which he calls " Osteocolle." (Vol. iv., p. 443. Fr. Ed. See also 

 Appendix to Beeche's Voyage.) 



t The definition of the outlines of the land and sea during the mammoth 

 period, or the extent to which marine estuaries entered into the continent 

 of Siberia, including possibly even a separation of the Ural from the Altai, 

 can alone be determined by the united labours of many observers. If the 

 data of Pallas respecting the grounds on the lower region of the Issetz 

 river, which is covered with black earth, may not also have been under an 

 arm of the sea at that period. At the same time, we think that the 

 granitic hills between Miask and Troitsk and the chain of Kara-Edir-tau, 

 both of which are destitute of any traces of marine sediment, must have then 

 been above the waters. 



